Thousands March in Mexico to Protest Drug Violence (VIDEO)

Several cities across Mexico are holding marches, after thugs assassinated seven people, one of which was the son of poet Javier Sicilia.

24 year-old Juan Francisco Sicilia, five male friends and a young woman were found dead on March 28 inside a vehicle abandoned in Cuernavaca.

Along with the visibly tortured bodies, a note by the Gulf Cartel accused the group of having tipped authorities about drug activity via a government hot-line.

Relatives reported that two of the victims had earlier been robbed by men who identified themselves as police and threatened to kill them if they reported the crime, but these allegations have not been confirmed.

Like most cases like this in México, the perpetrators of these heinous crimes, are still at large. More than 35,000 people have been killed since 2006, when president Felipe Calderón declared a full-on war against drug-traffickers, and tough sometimes thugs do get captured, they get regularly busted out of prison.

The young Sicilia’s crime and subsequent outrage, has captured a wider notice because of the prominence and public candor of his father, who outraged, lashed out against Calderon’s “poorly conceived, poorly executed, poorly directed” anti-drug campaign.

“We have had it up to here with you politicians… because in your fights for power you have torn apart the social fabric,” wrote Sicilia in an “open letter to politicians and criminals”. “As for you, criminals, we have had it up to here with your violence, with your lack of honor, with your cruelty.”

“If criminals want to kill themselves, let them, but let innocent people live in peace,” said Carlos Romero, a law student who joined the marches held in Mexico City. “How else do we say, ‘Enough already’?”

Genaro Garcia Luna, México’s public security secretary said in a television interview that the number of drug killings has subsided in a few cities, like in the city of Tijuana. He said anti-organized crime efforts in Colombia and Italy, for instance, were fruitful only after 7, 8 years of campaign implementation. “Mexico is carrying out a much more rapid process, much more effective,” he said.